Scion iQ: Slow, Whiny, Tiny—but Great to Park

ENLARGE

The Scion iQ
Toyota Motor Sales, USA

By

Dan Neil

Updated May 29, 2012 12:31 p.m. ET

BEFORE YOU EVEN start, Toyota knows: The tin-hearted halfling you see here is pricey—$16,000, in the ballpark of a Ford Fiesta or Mazda2 or the sublime Honda Fit—it's slow (about 12 awful-sounding seconds to 60 mph), and it's about as sexy as a hairy nose wart.

On the other hand, the Scion iQ is the sky-rending, dragon-slaying Bugatti Veyron of turning circles. This car will do a 180-degree turn in a mere 26.4 feet, curb-to-curb, which means, among other things, you could drive the iQ nose-first into your two-car garage at night and drive out nose-first in the morning. For comparison, the minuscolo Fiat 500 has a turning circle of 30.6 feet. America's other microcar, the Smart Fortwo, has a turning circle of 29 feet, even though its overall length is 14 inches shorter (and the iQ has four seats, not two). The Mini Cooper—which you may have errantly thought was a small car—requires a 35.1-foot width of asphalt to turn around. What a freaking boat.

ENLARGE

The Scion iQ will do a 180-degree turn in a mere 26.4 feet, curb-to-curb.
Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal

I confess that "turning circle" is about item zillion on my list of car-buying priorities. And yet, the iQ's size and pirouetting nimbleness strangely and pleasantly morphs one's perception of the urban driving environment. Where once you saw only a street tightly packed with parked cars, now all you see are the open spaces in between.

Scion's iQ: Meet America's U-Turn Champion

Dig this back-of-the-envelope arithmetic: A city block is typically a 10th of a mile, or 528 feet. A parking spot is typically 20 feet long, which means you could have 26 spaces on one side of the street, or 52 on both. In the U.S. cars average roughly 14 feet in length. Therefore, in round and theoretical numbers, each occupied space has 6 feet of asphalt left over, adding up to 312 feet of unoccupied parking space per block. Obviously, this space doesn't always come in usable parcels, but some of it does. The iQ is designed to exploit these unused interstices.

Other fun facts: If you get the iQ in an empty parking lot, crank the wheel all the way over and stand on it, the car will lay down some of the tiniest, most adorable doughnuts you've ever seen. As to what sort of mischief Ringling Brothers' clown college could get into with the iQ, the mind fairly boggles.

Many people seeing the iQ for the first time will think of the Smart Fortwo, which is an injustice to the Scion. The Smart, with its stumbling, bumbling five-speed automated manual transmission and sub-liter three-cylinder, is thoroughly out of date. The Scion feels very much like a real car and it is remarkably attractive for what it is. It's worth noting that Aston Martin rebadges the iQ as the AM Cygnet (for the purpose of fudging its corporate-fuel-economy numbers). Surreal, I know. If it helps, think of the iQ as the pauper to the Cygnet's prince.

Photos: A Parking Dream

Toyota Motor Sales, USA

Scion is Toyota's youth-oriented outlet in the U.S.; the iQ is badged a Toyota in the rest of the world. By any other name, this was not an easy car to build. Actually, it's a fairly radical piece of engineering: 10 feet long (or 3 meters in the metrically enlightened world), 66.1 inches wide (1.67 meters) and 2,127 pounds (under 1,000 kilos). That's a brutal box in which to fit a full-featured car with seating for four.

Here and there, you'll find artifacts of compromise. For example, the right-front seat is mounted on tracks set slightly ahead of the driver's seat and the dash on the right side is shallower than on the left. This arrangement allows the very cornfed among us to sit comfortably in the right seat and also makes space for a right-rear passenger.

However, the rear-seat space behind the driver is considerably tighter, and that's why Toyota/Scion calls this a 3+1, or 3.5-passenger car. I suppose it's possible to wedge a child's car seat in the back, but man, you'd really have to have a grudge against your kid.

Another compromise: The iQ has no trunk (truncated?). However, raise the rear hatch and lower the 50/50 split rear seats and you suddenly have a 16.7-cubic-foot cargo space. That's about as big as the trunk of the Buick Lucerne.

This car is the proverbial 5-pound bucket. The desperate packaging measures include a flat plastic fuel cell sandwiched under the rear floorboard; a climate system compartmentalized entirely behind the center console; and a differential forward of the transverse-mounted engine. Your service technician is going to need Kristen Wiig's baby hands to work on this thing.

Still, from the driver's seat, the iQ feels relaxed and comfortable, even spacious, with a 37.7 inches of headroom, 40.9 inches of legroom and 53.1 inches of shoulder room, figures comparable to those of that obscene leviathan, the Toyota Corolla. The carving out of interior space involves extensive use of super-thin injection-molded plastic pieces on the dash and doors, without much of anything behind them, as well as seats thinner than a jailhouse mattress. Toyota's noise-vibration-harshness gurus nonetheless managed to quell most of the unpleasant resonances and noise in the cabin. The only time that the car gets really shouty is when you lash the engine during hard acceleration. Don't do that.

In the case of the U.S.-spec iQ, there's some packaging giveback in the engine compartment. Our version of the car gets Toyota's naturally aspirated 1.3-liter four-cylinder only; buyers in Japan and Europe have a 1-liter engine option, as well as a 1.4-liter diesel. A six-speed manual transmission is also available in other markets. The U.S.-market car endures the hurdy-gurdy droning of a continuously variable transmission (CVT). You might note, with an eye roll, that the Smart iQ's highway mileage of 37 mpg is bested by many larger cars, including the Chevy Cruze Eco and the VW Jetta Sportwagon diesel (both rated at 42 mpg on the highway). That's a little deceiving, however. The iQ's city mileage is 36 mpg, meaning that its average fuel economy pencils out to 37 mpg, the highest of any nonhybrid on the market.

Around town the iQ holds its own perfectly well, trundling away from stop signs and cornering/braking well within reasonable expectations. As the energy levels rise, the car feels steadily less sure on its wheels, and on a less-than-perfect two-lane country road the iQ gets downright bouncy. Its high center of gravity and short wheelbase leave nowhere for those energies to hide. And know we know what it feels like riding steeplechase on the back of Peter Dinklage.

As for safety, it's undeniable that in a nose-to-nose with a heavier vehicle—say, a riding lawn mower—the iQ is severely disadvantaged. But in the sort of accident the iQ is likely to have in an urban environment, it seems pretty fortified. Most notable is the 11 air bags on board, including one that rings the rear glass to protect rear occupants' heads, which will be only 4 or 5 inches from the glass. If this thing should get hit, the interior will blow up like a piece of popcorn.

As always, it's horses for courses. If you do a lot of interstate driving, or if you have kids or claustrophobia, then obviously this isn't your car.

If you deliver pizzas in Monaco or Marrakech, oh baby, has Toyota got a car for you.

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